After a few runs on LT, I concluded that 1. I should save as many popcorns as possible when killing The Sacrifice. Because blackspaces. 2. I should kill as many Lekon's Chosens as possible and start the final boss fight. They each will give him +3% resists. If I kill nearly everyone, it can easily lead me to L10. However if I have consistent might or Cursed Cutlass (which is a great item!) I'm not sure if I should kill them or not. 3. I'll have plenty of piety thanks to all that goats. I can use this at my advantage, for example, journey to TT to take dodge, poison strike and some potions, or getting piety with GG to fuel protections. If I happen to find Dracul it's an instant win, now I have plenty of bloodcows, plenty of bloodpools and plenty of piety. JJ isn't easy because I need 45 piety first, but if I can reach 80 piety it should be nice I suppose. 4. Lekon will summon another L10 Lekon's Chosen when there's nobody, and swap his position with it. Ignore that goat and keep slam the Lekon.

Also, Mystera is good in this dungeon as nobody is magic when they are finally defeated. As long as I don't get hit by thralls, she won't deduct piety at all. Binlor is also not bad because The Sacrifice is magic and the map layout is good for knockback chain.

Meanwhile I'm sort of spinning my wheels. Too intimidated by Magician Gold to give it a good try, same with Masterpack puzzles. I've instead just been trying to rainbow dungeons new and old, really casual stuff.

I've been thinking about documenting stuff. Is there any sort of place cleared for this? I've never edited wikis before, not outside of simple text changes, but I think a resource detailing exact numbers and mechanics for all the new content would be cool, if only one existed.

Maybe we can generate some wiki pages like "Alpha:", with "Extreme:" something like that. By C&P the format. I'm not very comfortable with the wiki grammars, though I'm the only one recently editing DD wiki.

Little bug report to drop here, but I am not too sure how to replicate it...

I was playing with the Golemancy Scroll. Orc Thief, of Binlor, in Cursed Oasis. Somehow, someway, the might effect on kill was stacking and not decreasing. Everything I killed boosted my attack higher and higher and higher until the end where I had well over 600 attack. I don't think it was a potion or item synergy, as I was going for Miser so I couldn't have bought anything, and my special potions ended up not being needed. Bysseps, Burndayraz, and Getindere were being used, and the only boon I bought was Stonefist.

I tried for a bit to recreate it, but I can't really make it happen. Still worth having your testers research if they can, a pretty big exploit has opened up if the cause behind this is found.

PS. Golemancy Scroll and One Horn are actually really neat. All this time I've been prepping dragon shield because it's just the best all-around prep, but the scroll is MUCH better than it seems on paper (Turning popcorn to huge physical resist is an amazingly helpful boost) and the horn, while not nearly as good as the shield in most situations, has good use in being something like a repeatable slayer wand. It can turn an otherwise troublesome monster into free EXP. While neither really trumps the dragon shield, they're still pretty fun to play with, and quite capable with the right strats. More than can be said for the cauldron, for example.

Dropping in here to post another gameplay report. Just because I like doing that, sometimes.

The mod has made me a much better player. I'm not sure if it's the mod exclusively, or I just happened to improve while playing Extreme Edition's content, but I feel as if the trials and tribulations of doing the Extreme Edition quests are the precise point I really learned the value of certain mechanics. Namely, god conversion, health as a whole, and just how damn good max mana can actually be (I once thought of caster approaches to be pretty bad, I'd always rather get damage, resists, and use magic to supplement brawling.) thanks to the likes of Hidden Workshop 6 badge run, and the god-awful Scrapyard vicious-hoarder.

I've been seeing the results of this for a while, as I'd been knocking out a lot of gold challenges and the triple quests out over the months, and now I'm seeing it again as I've become good enough to run vanilla Vicious dungeons purist. While I probably aren't as good as the old guys long before my time like Lujo, Tinker, Darvin, Avatar, Spleen, Choong... basically everyone on this forum EXCEPT me, I am starting to feel like I've gotten good and can proudly count myself in the elite and am in fact capable of thinking for myself and discovering strategy to call my own. Where does this fit into the mod other than me owing it stepping me up to the next level? The Golemancy Scroll.

I don't think anyone's talking about this thing, but by god they SHOULD. I don't think anyone's really talked about it yet besides me in the last post, but damn this thing's good. I've been taking it as my prep for a good few runs now, and I love the hell out of it. It's beating Vicious Token runs, it's in all honesty probably one of the most efficient items around as far as spiking goes. 2-3 popcorn is an EXCELLENT tradeoff for a high-value kill in leveling as well as an incredible repeatable boon for boss spiking, presuming it's not a magical attacker. So long as you can manage your popcorn, it's an immense blackspace saver and it makes the den of lvl 1's secret subdungeon almost as good as finding Glenrick. I once again urge anyone playing the mod and lurking around to give it a try. It's a beautiful, beautiful item and I'm SURE I'm going to owe more than one victory in the coming expansion to it.

General_Milky wrote:The mod has made me a much better player. I'm not sure if it's the mod exclusively, or I just happened to improve while playing Extreme Edition's content, but I feel as if the trials and tribulations of doing the Extreme Edition quests are the precise point I really learned the value of certain mechanics. Namely, god conversion, health as a whole, and just how damn good max mana can actually be (I once thought of caster approaches to be pretty bad, I'd always rather get damage, resists, and use magic to supplement brawling.) thanks to the likes of Hidden Workshop 6 badge run, and the god-awful Scrapyard vicious-hoarder.

I must say, this is basically the nicest feedback anyone could give. So thank you! Right now the East is shaping up to be bit harder than the North (or rather the top end of it is harder, while the beginning stuff should be about even), so hopefully you can put that newfound skill to good use!

quote="General_Milky"]I don't think anyone's talking about this thing, but by god they SHOULD. I don't think anyone's really talked about it yet besides me in the last post, but damn this thing's good. I've been taking it as my prep for a good few runs now, and I love the hell out of it. It's beating Vicious Token runs, it's in all honesty probably one of the most efficient items around as far as spiking goes. 2-3 popcorn is an EXCELLENT tradeoff for a high-value kill in leveling as well as an incredible repeatable boon for boss spiking, presuming it's not a magical attacker. So long as you can manage your popcorn, it's an immense blackspace saver and it makes the den of lvl 1's secret subdungeon almost as good as finding Glenrick. I once again urge anyone playing the mod and lurking around to give it a try. It's a beautiful, beautiful item and I'm SURE I'm going to owe more than one victory in the coming expansion to it.[/quote]

It's fun to see someone catching onto my personal favorite item. While I tend to prep Cursed Cutlass if I'm in the mood for some brainless smackdown, I'm convinced that the Golemancy Scroll gives better value than Dragon Shield in the long run--not to mention it has spiking potential--but I don't really have the numbers to prove it. All I'm sure of is that it makes for a beastly orc rogue whenever I don't have to worry about a magic boss.

Also, any luck with Magician Gold (the real final boss, IMO) or the puzzles?

We made an expansion and it is awesome. Really, you should check it out, especially if you're looking for some extra challenge.

General_Milky wrote:Also, any luck with Magician Gold (the real final boss, IMO) or the puzzles?

None yet, not really tried. They're too daunting for now, and in Magician Gold case I keep feeling like I should do Monk, Paladin, and Bloodmage golds first (my remaining vanilla challenges) and while those don't scare me like Magician Gold does, they're still something I need to devote a couple of tries and serious effort to, and I just can't be bothered right now.

I think there's three major reasons for it. The first is simple fun. While I occasionally like the REALLY tight game where every choice matters, they can be exhausting. Just running normal dungeons allows me to relax a bit and explore items and classes and have a more casually enjoyable time, so it's what I'm gravitating to. Second is the lack of real reward outside of gold. If there was some reward like "A new dungeon!" or items locked behind all the gold challenges, you can bet your ass I'd have had them done a year ago. The last is prerelease hype. There's an expansion coming. I know this, I want it, and I have a psychological block from playing the game too much until it's here and it's time to REALLY binge on new content. This is just something that happens with me. The months before new content happens for a game I like, I tend to feel like I should be doing something else and save my stamina for release. For DD, this means I've not been doing more than two runs or so every handful of nights. I'm checking the forums more than I'm actually playing the game.

Yet another double post from me. I wonder if I shouldn't start just editing my last one to not spam...

Turns out I was full of shit. After last post I decided to finish the golds once and for all, did every single one of them, speaking vanilla. Immediately attempted Magician Gold and got clotheslined by it very clearly being the hardest class challenge in the game by far. I had a winning run going... or so I thought, until I realized that killing popcorn to squeeze in one more level and angering Mystera also gave the boss 90 magic resist. That was quite the downer.

A problem I have is I'm not sure if I should wait to worship until the very end, or worship early and stay relatively low level. I'm going to try the former and see how it goes, but Mystic Balance was pretty much the reason I could fight high levels in the first place... The boss isn't the problem, the main dungeon is.

Contrats on beating the vanilla golds! It's been awhile, but I remember Paladin being a real tough customer.

I'm not going to give any tips on magician gold (anything harder than the basic unlock quests is all on you guys), but as a gold challenge it was very intentionally designed to be the hardest thing in the expansion (bar puzzles). Expect Bard to get beefed up and future ones to be very much in the same vein (super, stretch challenges which it would be cruel to gate any content unlock behind). Experiment, do the math on how much (and at what level) you need to beat the boss, and good luck!

We made an expansion and it is awesome. Really, you should check it out, especially if you're looking for some extra challenge.

No kidding. Magician Gold is more like a Platinum challenge than anything. Most golds are actually not that bad, only about a third of them have a wall that isn't one-dimensionally solvable, but this one is on a level all its own. I'm sure I could do it, I probably could have managed that one run if I didn't get greedy for that extra level and anger Mystera, but the dungeon is truly devious. It's about using a god in a place where she's going to hate you, soul suckers are the only enemy she's okay with you fighting and those guys are Illusion levels of miserable.

I'll probably let this one wait til later. I feel accomplished enough having done the vanilla ones, I'll work on Magician next update so I can go back and fourth between it and the Bishop or whatever the fourth Church class ends up being.